Running an online store: the guide to selling more

Opening an online store has never been easier: a few hours are enough to put products on sale. Making it pay is another matter. Stores that plateau rarely have a platform problem: their product pages do not answer buyers’ questions, their catalogue differs on every channel, or nobody reads the numbers that would say where to act.

This guide opens our Ecommerce section. It follows the order in which a store is built and turned around: the platform, the product pages, the catalogue and its channels, stock and payments, the numbers, then growth. Each section links to the article that goes deeper. If your store needs to be built or put back on track, our ecommerce offer starts from your real sales, not from a theme.

Shopify or an open source platform?

For a small business with a standard buying journey (a catalogue, a cart, a payment, a delivery), Shopify is usually enough: the subscription covers hosting, security and updates. An open source platform like Medusa makes sense when the sale falls outside that frame (prices specific to each client, an ERP that drives stock) and a team can keep it alive. Compare over three years, development included: we detail it in Shopify or Medusa: which one for a small business?.

On Shopify, the cost that drifts fastest is not the subscription: it is the apps added one by one, each with its price, its code in the theme and its effect on speed. A yearly inventory is enough to sort them out, as we explain in Shopify: when one more app costs too much. And if you decide to leave, the migration is prepared URL by URL: Leaving Shopify without losing your SEO.

In B2B the question is different: each client sees their prices and terms after logging in, and a quote request becomes an order with no re-entry. See B2B store: client pricing, quotes and reorders.

What makes a product page sell?

A page that sells answers the questions buyers ask before paying: what exactly the product is, the total price with delivery, the delivery time, the return terms, and what real customers say. Those answers reassure more than a description that praises the product. The detail, element by element, is in A product page that converts.

Reviews count twice: they reassure buyers and, marked up as structured data, they help search. How to ask every buyer, not just the happy ones, is explained in Customer reviews: collect, display and rank. And speed is not a technical detail: a Deloitte study for Google linked it to conversions on mobile retail sites, as we report in Store speed: what a second costs in sales.

Can AI write product pages?

It can help write thousands of them, on one condition: never guess. First define the list of attributes for each product family, let AI extract them from existing texts, and measure or ask the supplier for whatever is missing. An invented value on a product page is a false promise made to a customer. The method is in Product descriptions and AI: writing without inventing, and its large-scale version, with automatic checks and batch review, in A catalogue of thousands of products: AI under control.

How do you feed your catalogue to Google Shopping and marketplaces?

Google Shopping, Amazon and other marketplaces rest on the same base: a clean catalogue where every product has an accurate identifier, title, description, image, availability and price, plus its GTIN when it has one. One catalogue, fed to every channel, saves fixing the same error in five places. See Google Shopping and marketplaces: preparing your store.

Once the feed is clean, the campaign is won on titles, prices and excluded queries: Google Shopping: what makes a campaign rise or sink. And before opening on Amazon, count the margin after subscription, selling fees and logistics: Amazon alongside your store: margin, stock, dependence.

How do you keep stock and payments under control?

Selling the last item twice is the mistake that costs the most trust. It is avoided with a single source of truth for stock (the store, the ERP or the till) that deducts every sale whatever the channel, a safety margin on the last units and an alert when figures diverge. See Inventory synced across store, marketplaces and shop.

On payments, the real fees combine a percentage and a fixed part that vary by card, country and currency, plus disputes: we compare them in Payments: the real fees of Stripe, PayPal and Shopify Payments. And returns cost far more than the refund: Product returns: a hidden cost to manage, not endure.

Which numbers should you track each week?

Five are enough, read together and compared with the previous week: visits by source, conversion rate, average order value, share of returning customers and margin after acquisition costs. Each points to a different lever: traffic, product page, offer or loyalty. The table, and how to read it, are in Online store: five numbers to track every week.

Two levers are set once and pay back every week: automatic emails (welcome, post-purchase, repeat purchase), covered in Store emails, and the abandoned cart reminder, which only sells if it answers the reason for abandoning: Abandoned cart: reminders that sell without nagging. Finally, the store’s internal search tells you each week what customers look for without finding it: Store search: when customers can’t find it.

When should you open a new market?

When the first one runs, and based on numbers: visits and orders already coming from the target country, delivery cost, VAT, customer service in the language. Translate first the best-selling product pages and the pages that commit you (delivery, returns, terms), show prices in the local currency, then measure. See Multilingual, multi-currency store: where to start, and our Website translation section for the translation method.

A newer question also arises: should AI agents be allowed to read your catalogue, or even buy for their users? It is a commercial choice, action by action, which we examine in Websites are shutting out AI agents: what about yours?.

Where to start

1. 01Read your five numbers.

   They tell you whether the problem is traffic, product page, offer or loyalty.

2. 02Rework the best sellers’ pages.

   Total price, delivery time, returns and reviews visible without searching.

3. 03Clean the catalogue at the source.

   One place is the reference, the channels receive it.

4. 04Audit your apps.

   Keep those that bring in more than they cost, speed included.

5. 05Automate the recurring emails.

   Welcome, post-purchase, repeat purchase, then the abandoned cart.

If you want us to do it with you, our ecommerce offer builds or turns around your store and connects it to your channels. For a first question, write to us.

Frequently asked questions